Current Events that Relate to History
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Comment
The Making of Emergencies
For centuries, theorists of liberal governance have worried about how emergencies can unfetter executive power. Trump has given those fears new urgency.New York Review of Books -
Book Review
How Pop Came Out of the Closet
Jon Savage’s “The Secret Public” traces the influence of queer artists on a hostile culture.The New Republic -
Argument
Is It Legal?
Deferring to power and authority leads inevitably to autocracy.In Case Of Emergency -
Comment
How Civil Service Protections Emerged After James Garfield’s Assassination
Reformers in the Republican Party had been calling for a professional, merit-based civil service since shortly after the Civil War.Retropolis -
Petition
Scholasticide in Gaza: An Appeal to the AHA
The organizers of a resolution condemning scholasticide in Gaza are calling on leaders of the American Historical Association (AHA) to rescind their veto of the resolution and allow all AHA members to vote on it . -
sourced
George Washington Cut Six Sentences From His Farewell Address. They’re Haunting Me Now.
“The conflicts of popular factions are the chief, if not the only inlets, of usurpation and Tyranny,” the first president wrote.Slate -
exhibit
President Precedents
How Americans understand the powers of the office and the legacies of past leaders.
From the HNN Archive
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What Is the Role of the Historian?
Rethinking the job of history — and the American Historical Association — after the veto of the Gaza “scholasticide” resolution. -
Letting the World Scream
In 1984, the U.S. rejected the International Court of Justice’s jurisdiction, revealing its tendency to ignore international rules it sees as unfavorable — even when it helped write them. -
The First and Last Queen of Haiti in Exile
Queen Marie-Louise outlived most of her family, yet her story about the revolution and its aftermath was rarely consulted by those writing the era’s history. -
Ohio’s Little-Known Fascist Member of Congress
How a local prosecutor protected white supremacists and went on to a career in Washington, DC. -
The Forebears of JD Vance and the New Right
Revisiting the Agrarian-Distributists and their fabrication of an American past. -
Nuggets of Condescension
By universalizing their own economic history, Western observers have used the past to portray African economic culture as backward and inadequate. -
The Burned-Over District
The Northeast caught fire this fall, in a way that recalls its past. History has some lessons about how to manage the region’s fire seasons to come. -
Who Built the Panama Canal?
Finding testimony from the Afro-Caribbean workers who changed the Americas forever.